Pencils with rulers: Home-schooled Nathan Cooper, 11, studies with his mother, Lanie Cooper, using his creation. The San Diego sixth-grader got funding for Ruler Pencils through Kickstarter.

All natural chocolate drink: The nutritional RAu was developed by San Diego residents Brian Watrous and Daren Myers, who got help from Indiegogo.

Nathan Cooper’s big idea: Print a ruler on a pencil. Why? Because he hated fumbling for one while doing his math homework. But who would listen to an 11-year-old kid?

Plenty of people, apparently. Thanks to 446 mostly strangers at crowd-funding site
Kickstarter.com, the San Diego sixth-grader hit his $350 goal in the first day. People loved his enthusiastic video as a precocious infomercial pitchman.

He ended up with $5,135, or 1,367 percent more than requested.

Kickstarter, Indiegogo and other sites encourage creators to tap their social networks to attract strangers. Rarely is money paid back, and backers don’t get shares in the company. Instead, they pick from a variety of rewards, like the product, a T-shirt or a simple shout-out of thanks.

“It’s incredible! I still can’t believe it! You all are amazing,” Nathan told his backers in December along with the bad news that production delays meant Ruler Pencils would arrive after Christmas. Backers understood. Pencils shipped by the end of January, two months late.

Funding and participation in crowd funding are way up, with the largest, the 3-year-old Kickstarter, reaching its first million-dollar project in February. Its second one hit four hours later.

The momentum has accelerated dramatically in the past year as artists, inventors and entrepreneurs discover this new access to startup money. It also offers cheap publicity and the real test: Will people buy it?

“The brilliant thing about crowd funding is it does market research for you. If you post a product, you can find out accurately what people want. What crowd funding does is say, ‘Hey, put your money where your mouth is,’ ” said David Bratvold, founder of San Diego-based news site
DailyCrowdsource.com.

But crowd funding a project obviously doesn’t guarantee success, he added. According to Kickstarter, more than half of the projects don’t get funded. Creators must do a lot of work to publicize their projects, plus they need to make accurate calculations on cost and delivery.

“The biggest thing is that most of your support comes from your social circles. Just because crowd funding exists doesn’t mean it’s an instant way to make money. The part nobody likes to talk about is that it proves your content,” Bratvold said.

Analytics and stats

Brian Watrous and Daren Myers had spent their own money to develop RAu, an all-natural chocolate drink. The San Diego residents turned to Indiegogo to get the drink into stores. It was a great experience because of what else they were exposed to.

“Through their site, they provide analytics on our campaign,” Watrous said. “We can see stats such as page views, Facebook likes, and how many times funders referred our page to other potential funders. We did not expect this information, so it was a pleasant surprise. We only expected a professional platform for funders, and we got that and more.”